Historic films showing bygone Bradford are to go on show for the first time in a hundred years next week.

The four short films are part of a collection of 800 priceless negatives which were saved from a skip by historian Peter Worden when he discovered them rotting in barrels in a disused Blackburn filmmakers several years ago.

Now, after years of painstaking restoration work by experts at the University of Sheffield and the British Film Institute, the movies will be seen as part of the University's Visual Delights archive film festival on Saturday, July 13.

Dr Vanessa Toulmin, research director of the University's National Fairground Archive, hailed the films as 'the most exciting find in UK film history for a century' adding that their importance to social historians was unequalled.

She said: "These are the crown jewels of early film. They are not just important in the UK but internationally. They give us an insight into how life was, what the streets looked like, how people dressed and what they did. They're amazing.

"They're a unique portrait of the energy and affluence northern cities like Bradford had in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras."

Thirty-five of the 800 films in the collection feature old Bradford, although only four of them have been restored. The other 31 are due to be restored during the next three years.

One of the Bradford films to be shown features a rugby league match between Manningham and Dewsbury in 1900, while another in the collection features a tram top ride through the city's streets.

One feature of the films is the number of mass crowd scenes they contain. Billed as 'local films for local people', cinema showmen would travel from town to town where people would flock to see themselves captured on the silver screen.

Dr Toumlin said: "A lot of the films were made by a Bradford man called Sydney Carter and a firm called W Marshall's Amusements. They used to go from one town to another with a travelling cinematograph show and they'd take up residency at places like St George's Hall. It was a huge novelty for people to see moving pictures of themselves."

Anyone who would like to see the restored films can call (0114) 222 8777.